Are you aware of your core wound?
That experience you made in a relationship early on in life, a relational trauma that still impacts you and reoccurs like a common theme in most of your relationships.
You know the moments when you feel like you’re in a deja vu, experiencing the same dynamics or conflicts in every relationship you enter.
For me it´s an underlying vigilance, waiting for the other to leave me at any moment and even when they´re with me wondering: “do you really want to be here with me?”
I have developed some quite interesting coping mechanisms over the year that kick in when this wound is triggered: like shutting down to numb myself to potential pain, disspearing in phantasy world or becoming passive aggressive against my partner to test their comitment.
This came from my dad “dissapearing” suddenly & unexpected when my mother moved with me to Sweden and he stayed in Germany when I was around 3. I still saw him a few times a year, but he no longer was a part of my every day life which for a small child equals dissapearing.
Today I am in a relationship with a man who lived in … (gues where) … when we met. That´s right, he lived in Germany and me in Sweden, so history quite litterally started repeating itself through our long distance relationship.
At this point there was part of me that doubted if this was really such a good idea and sometimes collapsed into victimhood, sighing: “why do I keep attracing unavailable men?!” - Anyone recognize that one?
My romantic relationships have all been different, for sure, but there´s always been this reoccuring theme of the other not being fully available either emotionally or physically. This has shown up more dramatically in the past through addiction, compulsory cheating and dishonesty.
Anyway, I found myself in a long distance relationship that constantly triggered my core wound and my first response was to judge it as unhealthy, because I saw the common theme appear again.
But right around that time I started learning about attachment from a new perspective, that proposed the idea that we can heal insecure attachment (attachment trauma) and start to develop secure attachment as adults.
This was quite ground breaking to me, that had studied childrens development & attachment and believed that our childhood screws us up for life (a belief that ended up creating quite some pressure on myself as a mother, but that´s another story).
Lucklily enough my partner knew about this way of relating as well and we have spent the last 2,5 years supporting each other through many triggered wounds into deeper and deeper safety & secure attachment. Today we live together (almost) fulltime.
Through this I have learned that when these reoccuring themes come up in my relationships, when my core wound gets triggered I can see it as an invitation to heal the wound instead of repeating the hurt.
If this is something you´re curious to learn more about and explore together with others who have the same wish, I invite you to come join us at one of our Connection Circles, especially the one this Sunday 20/3 in Lund at our Connection Circle: relearning relationships
How do we heal our attachment?
Now this is the kicker: we can only heal it fully IN relationship.
Why? Because it was wounded IN relationship and wired our nervous system to believe that certain situations are not safe for you IN relationships.
This means that we need to have disconfirming experiences IN relationship to rewire our nervous system to feel more safe IN relationships.
What is a disconfirming experience?
It is an experience that instead of confirming your theme when you´re wound is triggered (“you will leave me / you dont want to be here”) disconfirms it (“you are still here / you want to be here”).
How do we create disconfirming experiences?
We start noticing when our wound gets triggered in relationship and observe ourselves in our coping mechanisms, thats the first step.
Then we bring in embodiment & nervous system regulation (calming your system when triggered so you don´t react from your wound) + conscious communication (owning your experience instead of blaming your partner).
With some practice and mutual support this gives you the disconfirming experience that when your wound is triggered, your theme does not repeat (confirm) but you´re met and supported in creating more safety in your relationship.
This is how we heal in relationship.
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